Best Cities for Legal Professionals in 2017

Whether you’re soon to graduate law school and are looking for a place to start your career, or are simply looking for a change, one of the best things you can do for yourself is researching places you’d like to go. For some, it may be easy: moving closer to family or friends is a must. Others may simply want to go where the legal jobs are plentiful and the cost of living is affordable. Discovering your perfect place can take a lot of research. Fortunately, the good people at Abodo did that research for you.

Whether you’re soon to graduate law school and are looking for a place to start your career, or are simply looking for a change, one of the best things you can do for yourself is researching places you’d like to go. For some, it may be easy: moving closer to family or friends is a must. Others may simply want to go where the legal jobs are plentiful and the cost of living is affordable. Discovering your perfect place can take a lot of research. Fortunately, the good people at Abodo did that research for you.

They examined data on both employment per 1,000 jobs (job density or job opportunities) and median annual salaries for all legal jobs by metropolitan statistical area (MSA) provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Then, they combined these data with their information on median rents for one-bedroom apartments. The income-to-rent ratio for each MSA was calculated by dividing the median annual salaries by 12 to arrive at a median monthly wage. That number was then divided by then-current median one-bedroom rents.

The employment/1,000 jobs and income-to-rent ratio were both scaled such that each was assigned a relative value between 0 and 10. The final score each area was given is a weighted sum of these scaled values. Income-to-rent ratio was given 25% weight with employment/1,000 jobs taking up the remaining 75%. The resulting report gives legal professionals a clear picture of what to expect in 76 MSAs, from median one-bedroom rent to median salaries to job openings.

Top ten cities; image courtesy of www.abodo.com.

Note that this data is not just for lawyers. The BLS defines legal professionals as judges, paralegals, court reporters, title examiners, legal support and related jobs, and yes, lawyers.

Some of the results were to be expected. For example, the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria or DC-VA-MD-WV MSA, topped the list in terms of job density. Given that this MSA is home to our nation’s capital, legislature, and Supreme Court, no one should find this surprising. Data showed that 25 of every 1,000 jobs in the area are legal jobs.

The DMV, as that MSA is also known, took the #1 spot overall. Not only are the legal jobs plentiful, but salaries are high enough to offset a high cost of living – the median one-bedroom rent in the DMV is $2,273.00.

In terms of overall scores, the #2 and #3 spots go to Philadelphia and Detroit, respectively. While Philly has fairly high rents ($1,367.00) and a lesser median salary ($50K behind the DMV’s $134K), the high job density makes it a good place for legal professionals. Detroit, with roughly half the legal jobs as Philly and a third of those in the DMV, got the #3 spot due to reasonable salaries and incredibly low median rent. The Motor City’s median rent was an affordable $525; coupled with a median salary of $75K ($8K less than Philly and a full $59K less than the DMV), it’s easy to see how Detroit garnered the #3 spot.

If you’re strictly a “show me the money” type of person, it’s time to head West; the highest legal salaries were found in Silicon Valley. The San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara MSA has a median salary of $142K, followed by the San Francisco-Redwood City-South San Francisco MSA at $138K. Median rents in these two California MSAs are $2,445.00 and $3,210.00 respectively.

While this article is about the best places for legal professionals to move, curiosity demands to know which MSAs landed at the bottom of the list. The three areas with the lowest scores are Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, California, and Greensboro-High Point, North Carolina. This isn’t to say these MSAs aren’t perfectly fine places to live and work. There are simply fewer legal jobs to be found and salaries aren’t quite high enough to contend with higher rents.

To recap, the Abodo report found that:

“Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Detroit, San Francisco and Miami are the best cities for legal pros.

About Jay W. Belle Isle

Before becoming LegalReader's Editor-in-Chief, Jay W. Belle Isle worked as a freelance copywriter with clients on four continents. Jay has a degree in Business Administration from Cleary University and a Juris Doctor from Thomas M. Cooley Law School. Jay has also worked as a contracts administrator for a DOD contractor specializing in vehicle armor.

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